Our resolutions, it turns out, are also surprisingly revealing windows into our inner lives, and the ways in which we deceive and manipulate ourselves. We use resolutions, research is finding, not only to tell ourselves how we’d like to change in the future, but to make ourselves feel better about who we are today. Even when they fail — especially when they fail — resolutions can be revelatory.
The study of resolutions offers some uncomfortable truths, not least of which is that resolutions alone can actually be an impediment to meaningful change. But it’s also yielding some valuable insights into how they work when they’re effective. We’re learning more and more about how deceptive resolutions can be — but we’re also discovering how we can use them to learn more about ourselves, and to turn our hopes for change into something real.
People have been making New Year’s-style resolutions all over the world for thousands of years. The month of January has resolving built right into its name: The ancient Romans named it after the two-faced god Janus, who, with one face looking backward and the other forward, symbolized the hope that we might learn from the past to improve ourselves in the future. Influential early Americans like Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards published widely imitated lists of resolutions.
We’re all familiar with this way of thinking about resolutions: By stating your plans in plain English, you create a clearly defined target for your willpower. If you say those plans out loud, or even write them down where you can see them later, you are putting your dignity on the line. Ideally, by making a resolution, you take a longing — a desire to improve — and convert it into an action.
